Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara’s got things to mess with, tinkering as always. She knows he said his gun was shot and she believes him-but the wood still looked cool, maybe she can figure something with that. Maybe she just wants to play with it. Not like Kara had formal training-she just liked to tinker.

Kara laughs. It’s an amusing thought for sure. “Hey, I do what I want.” Pitchforks-snrk. She considers him amusedly.

“Worked that out, did you?” Like she had said-it wasn’t exactly good folks buying kids for beer money. She’s amused more than anything. Nobody knew where the hell she’d come from-and she’d told enough ridiculous tales anybody who cared had long since given up.

They were both from the East. It was some kind of coincidence for sure. She wants to ask him about it. She wants to ask a lot of things. But it’s careful, this was a very careful thing...so she’d tell him some stories, maybe. The real story, that old ridiculous past life she hadn’t chosen and then escaped from on a whim in the same impulsive manner she did anything. How she had gone and forged her own way.

It’s a show of trust. Also, some of it was funny.

“I dunno if it entirely counted until the last group, really, but I was a raider three times over. The last were bloodthirsty fucks that actually wanted to take me along on raids, and that’s who I locked into a burning building on the very first one they took me on, ‘fore coming out this way. All they had even given me was the baseball bat. Smart enough not to trust their new recruit with a gun, but dumb enough to think I’d go along with their bullshit.” Aaaaah, those fucking morons.

Kara goes and gets her own project now, some sort of gadget that had been cleaved in half at some point, somewhere. Pre war for sure. She settles back in comfortably.

“The group that bought baby Kara as a joke got killed around the time I was nine or so.” She’s not sorry about that. She’d been little more than their pet for however long they’d owned her for.
“I was just this skinny ass kid they hadn’t taught to fight, so the second group just plunked me down in a cage at their base, entertainment, you know.” That part was less funny, but it gets better.

“They’d bang on the bars and terrorize me, mostly. Every damned day it was always how they were going to kill me the next day in some awful fashion. I didn’t sleep much and they weren’t really feeding me too well, and I guess that’s after a few weeks of that I just finally went a little crazy.” Kara’s mouth curves into that wicked grin. “They’d come in to do the same old shit and I’d interrupt them to make suggestions first. Gruesome, hilarious ways to off me. I figured they were either all talk or they weren’t, but fuck it-I was tired of their shit and tired of being in that cage and tired of them saying stuff but never carrying it out. So they decided I was crazy and then-” Kara snaps her fingers. “I was one of them. Gang Leader was this boss lady named Maara-she wasn’t nice but she also didn’t let anybody touch me, so she was cool enough in my book. They left me at home when they went murderin’ up the countryside, and eventually I was earning my keep well enough breaking into places and finding cool shit in abandoned places no one cared I wasn’t going out on raids. That was the bulk of my childhood, basically. Wasn’t terrible. Was lucky in them being a bigger group. People died left and right still, but numbers stayed steady and Maara had ‘em all by the balls, so they were slightly less likely to kill each other off, most of the time. Always somebody bigger and badder out there though, you know how Raiders are.”

A shrug. “I was in my teens and out scavenging when we got stormed. Came back to a bloody fuckin’ massacre. Talked my way into not getting killed but-” Okay, this part isn’t so funny. “...well, I wasn’t so great a talker that I got in for free. They had me fight somebody who had pissed off the big boss recently. Winner got to live.”

Kara considers idly, briefly unamused. “I heard the folks who bet on me made bank." He probably wouldn't judge her on it, she knows-but that was the one thing she wasn't entirely proud of. Being sold like that hadn't been her choice, but beating the other woman to death had been.

If she were faced with it again, she didn't think she'd bother. Fuckers could get their entertainment somewhere else.

"Sooooo I wasn't real keen on the raider life proper, turns out. Whatever my mom got in exchange only stretched so far, you know. So I bailed, and I've been living large and getting into all kinds of entertaining trouble ever since." It's a happy fucking ending for sure.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray gives Kara a dry look. "You run around with a baseball bat, you name every-fucking-thing, you're more comfortable with the Khans than any regular schmo out there, you patchwork everything, and you shriek random one-liners every time your blood's up. Please."

He listens to her story without judgement. Everyone has to live with whatever they got dropped into. "You lived, and you're doing your own thing now," Jonah says, going back to his sewing. "They're dead, and they're probably also still stupid. I don't see a side where you didn't come out ahead."

Moray shrugs. A little of that looseness has tightened up again, the smooth planes of his face cabling up again into smooth implacability. "I can't talk. The Regulators I grew up with - ended up killing most of them. All the ones I knew, anyways."

The needle stops threading. It taps against the ballistic plate, restless.

"My father was like this," he says, abrupt. "Before me. I caught on. Got good at it. Better than him. Had a stronger taste for it."

Moray looks up. His eyes are dark and black. "I adapted."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara nods, and some part of her feels soothed. He got it. He knew that wasn't what she had wanted to be, what defined her.

He'd said so.

Kara's mind drifts to the statement he'd made about her being just fine the way she was, and the way it'd tripped her up, made her tongue stick to her mouth and her face burn. He'd really meant that. It was maybe one of the nicest things anybody had ever said to her.

She zones back in as he shrugs, begins to speak-his face changes. Kara frowns internally, that distant warning bell sounding somewhere in the back of her head for some reason.

"I can't talk. The Regulators I grew up with - ended up killing most of them. All the ones I knew, anyways."

Kara's large blue eyes stare at him a moment, a blink. Her project lowers, mostly forgotten about as he continues.

It takes her a second to put together what he's telling her. "They turned on you?". She guesses, trying to work that out.

'Like this-'. The hurricane of violence? She remembered how lit up he had been, alive and smiling at the Powder Ganger house. Unrestrained.

His strict professionalism wasn't something somebody beat into him-it was his self imposed muzzle.

Holy shit.

 

[Obuzeti]

He's still again. This story, pulling it out of him is like drawing a fishhook - it tears and rips as it comes out, his features still as frozen waters as the words come in terse strings. "He liked killing. Regulator was just a white hat he put on top of it. Got paid to do it, got respect for it. Made him think he was better. He had a girl, wanted a family. I don't know precisely what went wrong, but it was just him and me."

The needle taps. Kara's jacket is strewn over his leg for the moment, giving him a bit of support.

"Bible stuff was his attempt to teach me things. Didn't talk much, aside from chapter and verse. Uninterested, ambivalent when not on the hunt. So I went with him. Learned to track, to forge and repair, to stalk and kill. We - indulged, together. We couldn't stop. When it came out, the Regulators came for us. My father ran for Dunwich."

His hand stops tapping. The needle trembles, then with frigid implacability, it sinks right through the denim of Kara's jacket and keeps going.

"Killed the Regulators. Killed the ghouls. Killed my father. Killed everything. Spoke to the Regulator that trained my father. He told me to be better."

The needle comes back up. On the tip trembles a bright dot of blood. He doesn't even notice.

"Don't understand that. Can't. Can at least be better than Johann. Can have rules. Can understand myself, abstain from hypocrisy. It is the least. Cannot change who I am."

Moray's eyes are terrible. In them there is an absence of anything but motion, and screaming: silent, and wild.

"I am a killer."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jesus Fucking Christ-no wonder he had previously found her reprehensible-she lived and acted on nothing but her impulses, and HIS impulses were to kill things. No fucking wonder, his dad had been taking him around and encouraging whatever he’d passed down in his blood.

Kara feels cold. It’s not the first time he’s tripped her heightened survival instincts, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. That coiled sense of motion, of an impending crash is back in his eyes-like he might snap and strangle her to death on the fucking spot. He’s scary. He’s so damned fucking scary and it nearly pulls that manic grin to her lips, a flippant remark followed by a quick retreat.

But -no-.

Kara doesn’t trust herself to speak-she’s not sure what the hell to say and the only things that come to mind were for sure the wrong things to say-instead Kara shifts to her knees and touches him. Fingers to his shoulder, the other to his face. Doesn’t shy away, doesn’t drop her gaze, just surges from her frozen spot on the couch to invade his space because damn.

“I’m tired.” Is what she says instead, soft. Those eyes of hers are large and looming. Concerned? Concerned. He was no monster. Not to Kara. “Aren’t you tired? Let’s...go to bed.” Take him away from wherever she’d accidentally sent him, asking about his past.

Her touch is warm, as gentle as it is insistent, the familiar floral, spiced scent clinging to her skin and hair.

 

[Obuzeti]

It feels like the only language he speaks, sometimes, is touch. Kara's fingers are hot right through the arctic chill of his own flesh, and Jonah instinctively leans into the touch, into the better way he's found following her around. His head rolls down along her wrist and he leans forward, his arms coming together behind her back as he draws the little woman into him. The bed sounds nice, but he needs this now.

Jonah's nose brushes along the soft skin of her neck, taking in that freshly-clean scent. The icebergs recede and the steel slides back into the depths as he breathes. It doesn't go away. But he doesn't have to think about it, right now. He can be other things, too.

It's a long minute before he speaks.

"Okay," Jonah says, quiet. He wants to apologize, but chokes on it as soon as he opens his mouth. He's not sorry when there's blood on his hands. He knows what he is. The least is to not compound it with hypocrisy.

Not now. His arms firm and lift, and he picks up Kara as he stands. The jacket slides to the floor out of his lap, and he brushes it aside with a foot. The bed is in its own room, just around the corner. The sensation of carrying Kara, of finding something so precious, jabs into his skin hot and vital.

There he sets her down - stares at her, but the frigid stillness is banished. He shifts on his feet once. But they've done this before, and that memory bolsters him as he slides under the sheet and offers a hand to Kara, in what is quickly becoming ritual.

"You deserved to know," Jonah says, throat dry. "That was fair."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The embrace helps to settle her quickened pulse, assuages the warning siren and survival instinct to get the hell out of dodge. He’s not going to hurt her. She’s mostly certain of that.

More importantly, she just wants to hold him. The patience and calm, the softness was still new and foreign, but also right, natural. Different set of instincts and impulses. She can feel the stiffness slipping away in his muscles as they stayed like this, still.

"Okay."

He picks her up and carries her away with him. Together. He stares at her after he sets her down, but the teetering sense of motion was gone. No strangulations today. She takes his hand and climbs into bed after him, nodding as he speaks, already moulding herself to his side.

Damn. Just damn.

“Nobody owns us.” Kara says, soft. She doesn’t say free-he isn’t, not like she is. The consequences of him following his impulses were too dire. So much about his professionalism and strict guidelines make way, way more sense, now. But he’s here with her, right? This was nice, wasn’t it? Kara hugs him tighter. “We can be whatever we want to be, out here.” He knows that. But it was good to say it anyway.

She’s quiet a moment, struggling with herself before that soft voice speaks into the silence again, honest and vulnerable despite the dangers she knows are associated with it.

“I’m glad to know you, Jonah.”

 

[Obuzeti]

His arms link around Kara, and already the feel of her against his chest is something he welcomes, relishes, cherishes. A bare few weeks they've truly known each other and their lives have warped and wound together, willows leaned betwixt for support. His lips find her temple and press there, soft and devoted. Here, he is the best he can be - so much more than he was made and molded for.

"I'm glad too," he says. Naked somewhere under the flesh, with Kara. Two scared souls, huddling together. "To know you, Kara."

His forehead leans against hers, and the weight of his sins slips from his back. Fatigue quickly chases him down into sleep.

~*~

In the morning, he feels Kara before his eyes open; her hair, tickling his nose, primarily. Jonah sniffs and stirs enough to lift his head out of it, and takes stock. The little firestarter herself has curled into his chest and stolen most of the blankets, a ball of warmth buried in his arms. Her breath puffs down his chest in steady intervals. His right arm is asleep, under her weight.

It's the most peaceful he's ever felt. No looming mission, no urge to move. Just this bed, and Kara.

Jonah leans down and presses his lips to Kara's hair, and just - lays there. Soaking in the quiet contentment, like water to a sponge. It fills him and his heart.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The warm tightness to her chest again when he returns the sentiment, warm fuzzies. Kara sighs, and suddenly she really is tired, a content comfortable kind, safe. She’s not sure who slips away first-but it’s pleasant all the same.

~*~

“Mrfle.” What?

Kara tightens in her ball of stolen blankets, curled into the marble, warm form that was Jonah in her, no, their bed. As usual, Kara had slept hard-recharging for all her high energy antics, no doubt. Not that she had any adventures in mind in the immediate. She’s thinking va-freaking-cation. The one she’d put on hold to head to Devon’s.

Now she has company on her R & R. Go figure.

Can’t sleep all day though. Didn’t want to.

Blue eyes open to slits, a little crinkle to the bridge of her nose as she ‘suspiciously’ eyes the room, the brand new day. Then she tilts her head back to smile sleepily up at him, her hair mushed but somehow still fluffy. “Mornin’.” She says-though it’s probably closer to noon.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah looks down at her little smushed face, and doesn't resist the urge that rises. He leans down and pecks her on the lips, soft and welcoming to the new day. "Morning," he says, voice free of the early-A.M. slur. "You slept well."

It's half a statement of wonder that she rested so well beside him, immediately after that - conversation - and a faint flush of pleasure, that his presence could be comforting in that way. His other hand comes up and brushes the side of Kara's face, thumb tracing along her cheekbones as his fingers slide through her hair in reassuring rhythm. "We're doing this more often."

Restfulness does not come naturally to Moray, twisted in and vicious as he is. Waking up like this has swiftly become his favorite sensation. He's not giving it up.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The kiss gets him a lopsided grin. It’s a good day. Lazy.

”You slept well.”

“Warm.” And safe. Kara stretches her legs out but doesn’t roll away just yet, comfortable and calm. She would not have guessed anything like this would have ever been appealing to her, but with him it was. She’d take it if he would.

His thumb moves over her cheekbone, fingers sliding through her hair. Peaceful as she’s ever seen him. She's glad. Her hand smooths over his chest, the thin tanktop ridged beneath her fingers.

"We're doing this more often."

“Good.” Kara says with a huff of a laugh. “I was on vacation, you know.” Her hand moves on his chest as she turns into him, facing him proper now. “Figured I’d just resume that. Given the good company and all.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah's hand slides down Kara's face, along her neck and side; settles on her hip, fingers splayed wide. There's a thin ribbon of bare skin there between her shorts and her top, and his touch seeks that as naturally as breathing. There's no heat - just steady warmth, buoying inside. The way she turns into his body, responds to his own touch, pops little bubbles inside of him, makes him faintly - giddy?

Wonders never cease.

"I think," Jonah says, a faint flavor of amusement in his voice, "After chasing through a giant haunted casino and everything associated, we're permitted some rest. I suggest we take advantage of it."

He leans in again, but this time his lips connect with the tip of Kara's nose, and then over her eyelids, ticklish and soft. The affection overflows from him, and he doesn't know how to say it, how to express it; only touch sends it out, just as he always has communicated. Jonah's soul is in his hands and his body, entirely physical.

"I've never tried to be on vacation," he murmurs, voice softer now, as close to Kara as he is. It's a bare rumble, veined with laughter deep down like gold. "What does one do on them, precisely?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The spark to his green eyes, the amusement and laughter to his voice, in his throat-he’s suddenly the most appealing man she’s ever seen.

He’s adorable.

Kara’s hand moves from his chest to his face, his short black hair tingling her fingertips as she kisses him in earnest, lips soft but searing-and then shifted to the lighter, softer kisses to his cheek and jaw, the ridge of his brow and the swell of his cheekbone, eyes sparkling mischief and affection, alive.

“Whatever we want!” She says cheerfully, coming up to her knees but ducked to keep her face close, fingers trailing down his tanktop again, almost absently. Whatever they wanted? So Kara was always on vacation, turns out. “Laze around here, go for walks, skip through meadows-mostly, I just don’t take any jobs for a minute. Don’t go looking for ‘em, and people don’t know how to find me in the first place, usually.” Another kiss to his forehead. She can’t help it. It’s not funny, exactly, but it’s just-light. She feels light.

She’s so embarrassingly warm and glowy feeling she’d just as soon kill somebody than let them witness it. But she doesn’t care if he sees it. If he knew it.

She wants him to know it.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah's arm curls around Kara's back and draws her in, his forearm and fingers curling around her waist warm and strong. With her at a kneel above him it draws her down on top of him, and for a moment he simply basks in this trust - that he'd let someone be atop him, flat on his back, and feel comforted by it. There's a weightless, alien sensation to the entire moment.

He slips past her face and his lips touch her ear, pursed. Her cheek is soft against his. "I like this," he murmurs. "I like holding you. I like touching you."

It's strange to refer to Moray as innocent, but his simple, total joy at contact can hardly be called anything else. There's no regret and no shame in how he simply bends to the touch of Kara's fingers and lips.

"I've never done this," Jonah admits, after a moment. "Never just - held someone. Or kissed them, really. Wanted to touch them. All this, it's new."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"It's not really anything I thought I'd like, before. The soft." Kara admits. His chest is hard against her soft one, his voice soft and quiet in the delicate shell of her ear.

"But I dunno, just...felt right. Is right. With you I mean." Yeah, she doesn't want to go hugging on anybody else, thanks.

Jonah though, she likes Jonah. He somehow captures all of her attention, made her want to slow down and just...exist a minute. Try to figure him out. He's like one of those geode things. Looks like a rock, but then you break it open and there's a whole glittering world inside. Secret. Special.

Surprisingly vulnerable, and it makes her want to protect him. Comfort him. Her hug tightens. He can be safe with her. It's not always enough, being physically tough, unassailable. Things could wear you down on the inside-and that's where Kara shone.

"...awfully wholesome for somebody like me, to be honest. Not gonna stop though." A hint of stubborn. She does what she wants, after all.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah hums again, and plants another kiss on Kara's forehead. Then he stretches idly and slides away, a little regretful, but balmy inside - he feels light. He kicks out from the bed and pops a variety of joints in a rolling, stretching maneuver not for the faint of heart, like a contortionist cat, and then comes to his feet. "Well," he says, and then is momentarily surprised he felt the need for the interjection. Justifying anything is new to him. "Need to finish your armor. Get a new gun, at least. Don't fancy running into your neighbors with just my fists at some point."

He comes around and offers a hand down to Kara, but mostly just ends up looking at her legs instead, from this angle. They poke out from the blanket, long shins and a hint of thigh that -

Moray, what.

He shakes it off.

"Up and at 'em, Kara," he says.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Oh them? Eh." Kara gives a lazy, dismissive wave. "We'd just offer to clear some levels for them in "their" base." Boy, isn't she just the most generous of landlords? Snrk.

They were convienent tenants though. Better Powder Gangers than Fiends any day. Drugged out fuckin' crazies. She accepts the hand and hops up, a quick stretch of her arms over her head a moment, on tiptoe, back arched, the small woman stretching tall-before flopping back to the flats of her feet, dropping her arms with a happy exhale, ready for the day.

"There's Good Springs short walk away. Got a doctor, a bar, and an old prospector with some -really- good stories." Not very useful far as weapons went but- "You still got the stack of prewar dollars from the casino? Probably exchange at least some of 'em at the little gunshop there. He won't have shit for weapons though, nothing like your fancy lady Loretta-may she rest in peace."

...had Kara posthumously named his gun? Or was she still teasing him? Probably both.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Yeah, so I might as well," Moray concedes. "I've still got the reliable -" he pats the shotgun, hanging off to the side from a coat rack salvaged from some Pre-War home, "but I'd like something with at least a modicum of range, so some sucker doesn't put a round in me while I'm trying to run up on him."

He whistles, sharp and loud, and after a moment Hrolf trots out of a side passage in the Vault and gives him a look. Moray shrugs at him. "We're heading out. You want some fresh air?"

Hrolf's nose scrunches at them both, but the big mongrel pads over to beside the Vault door in obvious impatience, having mapped out the interior of the Vault already.

Moray shakes his head and glances over at Kara. "I don't name my one-night-stands," he says, dignified, and moves over to start the Vault door's opening procedure.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The brief exchange makes Kara extra cheerful. She -knew- he liked his dog-how could you not? He was great. Biggest mongrel she had ever seen too.

Kara laughs, approving of the joke-and disappearing to throw some clothes on in a hurry.

When she reappears she's once again in the dusty dark colored half shorts and half pants-the one pantleg taped round her thigh to patch it up, the other gone entirely. A black fishnet thigh high stocking was on that leg, her familiar metal kneepad.

On top she had a plain white tank top with suspenders of all things over her shoulders, that small black sun tattoo and it's fiery tendrils half visible on the back of the one. The tank top reveals Kara has a pretty collar bone, among other things.

Without the jacket she feels a little bereft-but she'd manage. She's yanking on and tightening the laces to her mid calf length boots, her knife visible in one, the ace of diamonds playing card behind the laces of the other.

"Alright, gussied up as I get, let's go!"

 

[Obuzeti]

New Springs is more or less as Moray remembers - desolate, yet peaceful. No one gets shot up much in this corner of the Mojave, and the harshest critters tend to migrate further north in pursuit of prey. He remembers it as terribly boring. This leg of his runs he tends to hurry along on. Hrolf skulks along the side about twenty paces away, sniffing everything, which is odd because normally the hound isn't even in sight - he trails along behind during the day and comes closer to enjoy the campfire at night, but otherwise keeps his distance.

Whatever.

"First to the doctor," Moray says. "We're both scuffed up. Best to make sure nothing's fractured or infected. God knows plasma burns plus that fucking fog can't be great for us."

The locals peer at them as they pass by. Moray's face tightens at the attention and his usual stalk returns, the looseness he'd displayed in the Vault drawing tight like cords again, sealing up tight. When Doc Mitchell's house finally looms before them, Moray walks right up on the porch and through the door without knocking.

Doc himself jumps like a rabbit, hand dipping to his sidearm before he gets his bearings. "Jesus, Moray, don't you ever give a hoot before you walk in a man's house?"

"Bad habit to get in," Moray says, mild. "Made a trip to some real hostile places lately. Want to get me and - "

His face ripples. His eyes flick to the side.

" - my partner checked out," he finishes, and leans against the wall to wait.

"Who the hell's dumb enough to run with you?" Mitchell says, amused.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Ain't like you to insult a lady, Doc." Kara chirps, amused and cocky as always. She sails in several places behind, having been distracted by Hrolf's wary distance off the edge of town. That and Kara's lazy saunter fell rather short of Moray's stalking gait.

Doc Mitchell's face flashes surprise before it shifts to a flickering expression of deep concern, and finally, confusion. His eyes shift from the prankster trouble maker to the much larger, more lethal Moray-and then he shakes his head with a long exhale.

"I don't know what you're up to this time young lady, and maybe I don't care to know-"

"Relaaax. Nobody even lost a bet.". Kara says, her hands on her hips. Brassy as ever. "My first choice was the bar, but here I am to visit you first."

The good doctor wasn't so sure about this situation, but Kara never took or sought anyone elses counsel anyway. He'd move on.

"Alright Miss Walker. Tell me what you got into this time- not more mirelurk queens I hope.

Kara shrugged and started counting off on her fingers.

"Caustic fog mostly through a rebreather, banged my head hard enough I took a nap for a minute, later took another knock to the head but no nap, burned my arm pretty good after I nearly blew myself and Moray here up with a bitchin' stealth boy'd, fusion core grenade thing."

The doctor stared at her. "Well...you seem lucid enough despite probably having a concuss-"

"Mostly though, I swallowed my gum.". Kara interrupts, her amused smirk turning into a full grin as Doc Mitchell dragged his hand over his face. Kara was a difficult patient. Always seemed to be trying to stress his heart.

He turned to Moray. "And you?"

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray, clinical as ever, lists his share of the injuries like he's counting to five. "Slice along the fourth rib from a knife. Shot three times with a laser rifle in the chest and collarbone, then in the left wrist. Minor scalping. Cracked rib. Strained back muscle. First degree burns along front side of body. Shrapnel lodged in left shoulder, but removed. Caustic fog exposure to open injuries and burns."

Doc Mitchell just looks at him. Then he glances over at Kara. "It was your idea, wasn't it?" he says, deadpan. "I don't know what happened. I don't really want to. But somehow, I get the feeling at least half of that list right there is on your head."

Moray looks up. His gaze is even, but not the lethal threat he levels at most humans - just disagreement, for once. "I agreed to come."

Mitchell raises a hand limply in acknowledgement. "Oh, I bet you did. You look mostly patched up though. Stimpak?"

"Two, plus burn wrappings. Mostly want to check if anything in the bloodstream. For tetanus. Stuff like that."

Mitchell snorts. "I'm a sawbones, I ain't got no lab. You got bullets or broken bones, I fix 'em. Best I can do for internal medicine is run you a blood flush, make sure everything in your veins is supposed to be there. Good enough?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“I promised him a snow cone.” Kara bullshits in the face of Moray’s very gentlemanly defense of her-but she’s still who she is. Always looking to amuse herself, and the idea of Moray agreeing to come along on a job, with her of all people, for a fucking snow cone was too good to pass up.

She’s trying not to laugh right now, but it’s in her voice and her eyes as she picks up and spins the wheels of a toy car on one of the doctor’s shelves.

Though...Kara did feel a little bad about the bomb thing. It’d done the job and seemed like an awesome, hilarious idea at the time, but it had also been...reckless? Holy fuck, did she just think that? HER?! Of course it was reckless! Everything she does is reckless!

But it’s one hilarious thing if she blows herself up with some godawful, taped together monstrosity. It’s quite another if it gets Moray killed. That...might take some getting used to, needing to be...careful.

Kara briefly can’t decide if this was a good or a bad development.

She snaps back to attention towards the end, blue eyes widening. “Whoa, what are you, some kind of a quack?! I’d like to keep my blood IN my veins, thank you very much.” She has no idea what the hell a blood flush was, but it doesn’t sound like anything good. She also enjoys giving Doc Marshall a hard time-he was ridiculously patient.

Though Kara had grown up without any sort of medical care besides a bandage and a shot of whiskey, and sometimes, it showed.

“With all the old places you’re constantly crawling through, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, Kara.” He had dropped all honorifics, a sort of weariness that made it seem like this maybe wasn’t the first time Kara had shown up to torment him-but he’s not dismissive of the force of nature, just...you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink, and that was Kara, sometimes.

 

[Obuzeti]

Mitchell gives Kara a dry look. "A blood flush is a high-gluten diet that I recommend to you, with some trace charcoal additives and a stimulant to make your blood flow easier and your liver wake up for a bit. It gets rid of anything floating around in your bloodstream before it can cause trouble. Satisfied, yon superstitious peasant?"

He turns back to Moray before she can respond, but the laugh lines forming near his mouth give him away. "I'll pack together a kit and send it along tomorrow; you can pick it up at the General Store n' nobody will be any the wiser. That runs seventy caps apiece, yeah?"

"Fair deal," Moray agrees, and fishes around in his waistbag for the charge. Their health secured, he immediately turns around and walks out without any further pleasantry.

Doc Mitchell watches his back until the door swings closed, then shakes his head and glances at Kara. "He sounds like he's on the level, but you alright, girl? That's - not an easy man to get along with."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara’s pretends to scowl at him. “So long as nothing’s cherry flavored…” She mutters petulantly off on the side-only to grin a grin that could have been seen from outer space in the next minute.

Doc Mitchell was her favorite. He had stories too, had grown up in a vault. Kara had already pumped him for all he’d been willing to tell her about that over the course of a few scrapes and bumps and bruises.

“What do you mean? I’ve been getting along with him since forever!” Kara says with a smirk, flippant as usual. It's the only language she speaks...or had been.

“You sent him on a wild goose chase out to the sticks just to find a dirty limerick written on plywood.” Doc said dryly. “And the feathered and tarred, actively patrolling protectron that other time.”

“It fired bubbles.” Kara recalls, infinitely amused. “I would paid a lot of money to see his face when it turned the corner and asked for a hall pass.”

Doc gave her a stern look, and Kara figured she’d settle him.

“To be honest, I WAS giving it like, a fifty fifty chance he’d strangle me even if I wasn’t pranking him all the time.”

“And now?”

Kara considers, already moving for the door. “Twenty eighty, house’s favor.” She says with a cocky thumb to her chest. “And he’s got a dog.” Well of course. “Catch ya later, Doc!” With a cheerful wave she was through the door and skipping down the steps two at a time, landing in a small cloud of dust and giving a quick glance around, full of vim and vigor as always.

“He thinks you’re going to strangle me.” Kara reveals, amused. “He always did think I was crazy, some of the tricks I played on you.” Of course, people thinking she was crazy wasn’t rare in the least. She’d be more surprised to learn someone who DIDN’T think she was off her fucking rocker out in the Mojave.

“Whatshisface’s gunshop thing over there.” Kara gestures to the ramshackled building next to the bar. “I wonder if Sunny’s around-she’s got a dog.”